welcome! jeremy freese is a professor in sociology at northwestern university. he finds blogging to be a good diversion from insomnia and a far better use of time than television.

Friday, October 19, 2007

yen for ham fighting

To ask why I would be looking at the Wikipedia entry for "Professional Baseball in Japan" is to fundamentally misunderstand how I use Wikipedia, but anyway here is a quote from it:

For almost 30 years, until 1906, a game could be viewed freely, as it was considered shameful to take money for doing something the players liked.

Granted, of course all sorts of people do not like their jobs, but it's interesting to imagine making a living and enjoying your job being mutually exclusive as a normative matter.

Speaking of Japanese baseball, I still remember when someone told me that the Nippon Ham Fighters are to be read as "The Fighters for the Nippon Ham corporation" rather than "The Ham Fighters of Nippon."